I wanted to network two computers at home. One is a VAR Win98SE computer with a Belkin F5D5000 NIC; the other is an ancient HP Pavillion 3100 with a P166 chip. The manual for the HP clearly stated that the sole expansion slot on the motherboard was a “non-bus mastering slot” and the slot is a shared PCI/ISA slot. I found a card to work in there and networked the two (finally!) but at a 10 mbps speed.
I am just wondering if there is any way to change the motherboard non-bus mastering slot toa bus mastering slot so I can insert a faster card. Can this be done through any BIOS changes or is this just a hardware limitation? The PC is a pizza-box style case, and the motherboard is custom-made for HP but I can’t tell by whom and the diagnostics I’ve tried report the maker as unknown. So far, I’ve been unable to unearth anything anywhere about such a question. Hope somebody can help! Thanks…